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NEWS • VIEWS • INFORMATION • ADVICE


Voters in Wales will be going to the polls on 5 May when Assembly elections will be held. The NASUWT is urging members to vote for education and consider the implications for their profession when they make their choice at the ballot box

Vote for Education – 5 May

Key issues for education at the ballot box

Schools shake-up

The NASUWT has condemned plans to reform the schools system in Wales as ‘draconian’.

Education Minister Leighton Andrews has outlined plans to introduce national reading tests for pupils at Key Stage 2 and a new grading system for schools that could see the closure of those institutions deemed to be underperforming. A similar plan for numeracy is to be developed for the start of the 2012/2013 academic year.

Teachers could also face annual literacy and numeracy tests as part of their training. Initial teacher training (ITT) is to be revised so it becomes a two-year Masters course

The NASUWT believes the plans are an overreaction to the recent publication of international data comparing the performance of pupils in different countries.

Mr Andrews has been critical of what he has called a ‘systemic’ failure in the Welsh education system after Wales’ performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings, which grades countries on the basis of education performance.

Such statements are not only an overreaction, the NASUWT believes, but deeply insulting to teachers and headteachers, who work hard to ensure that every child fulfils their potential, while being hampered by a continuing funding gap with colleagues in England.

Introducing punitive monitoring and assessment systems will do little to improve educational performance, the NASUWT contends, and reforms should instead be focused on providing adequate funding and support to schools to assist development. The union is also concerned that introducing a grading system will lead to a return to league tables.

These plans will cost money and the NASUWT questions where adequate funding will come from at a time of straitened budgets.

Pupil funding gap

New Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) figures have shown that the pupil funding gap between England and Wales has risen from £527 to £604.

Ending this scandalous inequality has been a long-standing campaign of NASUWT Cymru and the Union is dismayed that the funding gap is increasing despite a pledge by the WAG to reduce this deficit through a 1% increase in the schools budget in 2011/12.

The NASUWT believes that radical action is needed and that local management of schools is failing to produce value for money. The Union wishes to see all political parties commit to returning control of school staffing budgets to local authorities, which would deliver greater economies of scale and free school leaders and governors to focus on teaching and learning.

Teachers’ pay and conditions

The current economic climate is placing the jobs of hundreds of school staff at risk.

The NASUWT has had reports of teachers being told by employers that their statutory entitlements such as planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time and the limit on cover must be sacrificed if jobs are to be saved. The NASUWT is clear that teachers must not be held to ransom or have the conditions of service that enable them to do their job effectively undermined as a result of the Westminister Government’s misguided programme of cuts.

Along with colleagues in the rest of the UK, teachers in Wales are facing a two-year pay freeze. This coupled with planned increases in pension contributions and the high rate of inflation means that teachers are facing the squeeze.

Pensions

Teachers in Wales are facing the possibility of a 50% increase in their pension contributions as a result of the Westminster Government’s assault on public sector pensions.

Ministers are currently considering increasing employee contributions by 50%, on top of a recent change in the index-linking of public sector pensions from the Retail Prices Index (RPI) to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). The NASUWT has calculated that on the average teacher’s pension of £10,000 per annum, an individual stands to lose up to £50,000 of the value of their pension over 20 years. (Continued on page 17...)

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